Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Bird Fighting Man

This is not our mast or our instruments. When one of these birds lands on our mast we only want to get it off right away, and we've never delayed long enough to take a photo. This is on another boat. But notice how it is sitting exactly on the wind direction indicator?

The "Black Magic" NZL 32, so magical, so fast that Team New Zealand kept it hidden through the Louis Vuitton series, using instead NZL 38, and only pulled it out for the cup, where it ran 5-0 against Dennis Conner's Young America Team

In 2000 the Swiss brought this boat, with a radical double keel, to New Zealand, where it did poorly. Doug told me that he really liked this boat,(designed by Philippe Briand and Peter van Oossanen) so I decided it would be a good cruising boat. If Doug Peterson liked it, so did I. Alinghi bought it instead and used it as a training boat.

The schooner Atlantic, a William Gardner design, was launched in 1903 and won the 1905 Kaiser's Cup transatlantic race in record time of 12 days, 4 hours, 1 minute and 19 seconds. This record for monohull sailboats stood for 100 years. The vessel was scrapped after deteriorating and sinking an 1982. Ed Kastelein commissioned a full size replica, and hired Doug Peterson as consulting engineer. The replica was finished in 2008.

Saturday, July 01, 2017

Louis Vuitton Cup, 2000 AC

We went to New Zealand to be there for the America's Cup. I worked in the city for a year but when the Louis Vuitton Media Center opened I was first in line for press credentials, which I was immediately issued. I quit my job in the city and hung out down at the docks, taking photos and writing stories for the next six months. I photographed 70 races, shot 700 rolls of film (no digital back then) and wrote a heap of stories.

We raced over and the water was filled with swimming sailors, but Young America didn't sink, and soon the crew went back on, put pumps aboard and took down the sails. After this the crew used the second boat, (after they strengthened it) but they were still, justifiably, a little spooked. The designer, Farr, blamed the break on the crew.

About Me

Two people: Fred & Judy , drawn to each other and yet somehow drawn also to the sea, and both intrigued by the idea of living aboard.
I saw her, blond and asymmetrical, beautiful, boarding another’s boat and I followed her and wooed her, or she wooed me. That was 1985 and we fell in love and we thought that to buy a boat and make a life together on the water was only natural.
So we did.
Fate.
The boat was WINGS.
For the next ten years we lived on Wings in Seattle, had jobs in the city, sailed every chance we got, and 40-50 times a year, went racing. It was great.
Then we left Seattle and began our cruising life. We voyaged across the world, across the seven seas, to faraway places, and made them our own.
Wings was our home, and is still, and we lived wherever the sea met the land and people welcomed us, as they did everywhere.
For thirty years we’ve lived this life, and more to come, we hope.
Join us now, and sail the seas.
Fred Roswold & Judy Jensen, SV Wings, Caribbean